


Sparks of hope

by Prisca



Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, M/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:12:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5743411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prisca/pseuds/Prisca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a future world Casey and Zeke are fighting for survive</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sparks of hope

**Author's Note:**

> sequel to Rehabilitation by Naemi ( _ **you can find the story at LJ or at Ao3, make sure that you did read it first**_ )

Reluctantly Casey opened his eyes and squeezed them shut again. The light around him was almost blinding, his head was hammering wild and he felt miserable.

"Hallo."  
A soft voice reached his ears like through a thick haze.  
"Can you open your eyes for a moment? Let me check them."

Casey groaned and tried to follow the instruction. He could recognize his surroundings only blurred. A large hall, gray walls, the ceiling far, far away. Someone bent over him, a dazzling light met his eyes painfully, he cried and tried to turn his head away. All in vain, he was fixed. Panic rushed through him while he tried to figure out what was going on. Fragments of memories hit him.

He was dead!

Zeke had killed him!

He shivered. Cold. So cold!

A blanket was pulled over his body, the voice again, far distant.  
"I know you feel uncomfortable. It will take some time until you be quite all here again. But you're safe, don't worry, we will take care of you."

Then a sting in his arm and the world went dark again.

+++

The next time he woke up he felt better. The world had finally stopped turning around, his head ached only slightly and he didn't feel the urge to vomit anymore.

"You're awake."  
Someone was talking to him. Frowning he tried to remember if he had heard this voice before. Hesitating he turned his head, remembering a strange fixation, but this time, he succeeded.

An old man who was standing beside his small bed, very old, al least 60 years. Most people didn't reach this age anymore unless they belonged to the few privileged people who could buy just everything. Natural food, fresh water, drugs to extend your life and slaves who did all the hard work for you, in the colonies, where the air was poisoned and the sun burning hot.

"What's your name?"

He licked his dry lips before answering.  
"Casey. Casey Connor."

"How old are you?"

"Seven ... teen?!"

"Good," the man said. Suddenly he held a glass with a clear liquid in his hand and brought it up to Casey's lips.  
"It's a medical supplement that will help to get your strength back. Just a sip at the beginning, your body needs to get used to it to work on his own again."

Compliantly Casey lifted his head a bit and sipped carefully, it was cool and tasteless, but he could feel the liquid running through his esophagus up into his stomach, where it spread a pleasant warmth. He sank back onto the cushion, tried to sort things out. All in vain, nothing seemed to make any sense.

"Is this ... heaven?" he finally asked.

"No, rather the opposite. We are deep under the earth, an old bunker, long forgotten. No need to worry, though. You are alive."

Casey sighed and closed his eyes again, while the memories came back, too many pictures at once. How he had tried to survive after the death of his parents, too small, too weak, he couldn't find any work and was forced to live from what he found on the streets. It was not enough. Finally, he had done the step his parents had always warned him about: he had sold himself as a slave, a sex slave.

The prep-house had been like a paradise, a comfortable bed, food as much as he could eat, and Zeke. The other slave he shared the room with. Zeke was not very entertaining, a good looking, brody young guy. But slowly they had gotten closer. Zeke knew a lot about the future which was lying ahead of them, a lot more than he was supposed to know. He also had told him about the arena. Casey shivered at the thought of it; he had known instinctively that maybe be could survive as a slave, but that he would never be able to get out of the arena alive. Zeke had strongly advised him to stay in the background, hoping that the potential buyers wouldn't notice him. But to be honest: The thought to die wasn't very scaring, after he had lost his parents, life on earth actually was not longer worth living.

Then the last evening, only half an hour until the beginning of the slave sale. Zeke had organized some Whiskey. What Casey hadn't known was that he had mixed some drugs into his drink ... some drugs to kill him ... to save him from worse. Then he had kissed him and in this last moment, Casey had known that he wanted a chance to live, to love ... But the darkness came much too fast.

+++

So, what was he doing here? Why was he laying in a bed, in a bunker deep under the earth? Why could he feel and think and talk? He was supposed to be dead. Reluctantly he opened his eyes again, tried to sit up, but the old man held him back.

"Careful. Don't overdue it. I know you have many questions, but one step after the other. It was close, the drugs were almost too long in your body."

Casey shivered.  
"It killed me," whispered he.

"The drug actually only puts you into a deathlike state at first. There is an antidote, only a handful people know about it. When you get it within two days, the effect can get nullified. It took a while, though, to find your body and to get you out of the prep-house."

Casey shuddered again. He felt like falling into a profound abyss, not knowing what was happening to him. He was dead ... he was not dead ... Zeke had killed him ... but now he was back. He couldn't think about this for longer, or he would lose his mind. Questioningly he looked back to the old man.  
"Why did you do that? I'm just ... a slave."

"You are not. No one is supposed to be a slave. Beside of that, we owned your parents."

Casey blinked confusedly.  
"My parents? They always tried their best to stay out of reach of the system. We had a little farm outside the town, in the forgotten landings, not much, but enough to survive. Until ..."  
He paused and swallowed. It was still hard to talk about that night. How soldiers had burned the house, his father had tried to stop them ... the shot ... his mom crying and throwing her body over his own to keep him safe. They had dragged her away, ignoring him, though.

The old man put a hand onto his shoulder.  
"I know," he said.  
"They got killed because they tried to help us."

"Help you? With what?"

"We are the last hope of the earth," the man answered.  
"It's only a glimpse, but with every day, we are getting stronger. Your parents never belonged to us, but they were close confidants. They never gave up hope that you, or, at least, your children, will live in a better world one day."

Casey had listened stunned, this couldn't be, could it?  
"The ... the Resistance? But .. these are only rumors. My dad ... my dad always told my that I better should learn how to repair a reaper and not spend my time with daydreaming."

"He wanted you to be safe as long as possible. Only a touch of a suspicion is enough and in the best case you will end in the mine or at a colony on Jupiter."

Too much information. Casey's head was buzzing again, exhausted he wished to be able to slip back into the darkness, with nothing but silence around ... silence ... silence ...

"I guess, this was enough talk for today. You need to rest now."

Was the voice in his head real or not? He couldn't say, he started to fall, deeper and deeper ... Stop! This was not the time to slip away into a comforting dream again. There was something he needed to know. If he could only remember what it was.

"Zeke!"  
His outcry echoed in the big, silent hall. He forced his eyes open again and stared at the old man.  
"Zeke," he repeated quieter this time.

"Yes."

"The guy who gave me the drug. He was a slave like me. Do you know what happened to him?"

The man's eyes seemed to darken.  
"Casey, we can talk about this later."

Panic rose up inside him. After his parents death, when he lived on the streets on his own, he had learned quickly to trust his instincts. This man did hide something. He shook up his dizziness and sat up, forced down the re-occurring urge to vomit.  
"I need to know. Zeke did save my life."

Silence for a moment. Then the answer.  
"Well, I'm not sure if this was what he had in mind when he gave you the drugs. In his opinion to kill you was the most human thing he could do."

The shock needed a while to ebb away. But finally, Casey pushed the shabby blanket aside, determined to get up.

The old man put a hand onto his shoulder to stop him.  
"Don't do this, Casey, please, your body isn't strong enough yet. You risk a total breakdown and I don't know if we would be able to bring you back once again."

His eyes were sparkling stubbornly when he answered.  
"Well, I don't care! All I want to know is what's going on with Zeke. You can tell me, or I will find out by myself."

For a second the man kept quite surprised, finally a slight smile crossed his face.  
"You are stronger than you seem to be," he said.

"Strong enough to deal with the truth."

"Okay."  
The guy nodded slowly and pulled a wooden chair beside the bed.  
"Please, lay down, and I will tell you all I know."

Still slighty reluctant Casey settled down onto the bed again and the old man started to talk.

"When the keeper finally came to bring you to the auction they only found your corpse. It wasn't difficult to find out what had happened, Zeke didn't even make a try to deny it. The amusement-dealer who runs the house demanded repetition. You're a pretty boy, Casey, I guess he had ... special plans with you, which would have created a lot of wealth for him. More than an ordinary slave."

"The arena."

"Zeke told you about it?"

"Not much. But enough to know that this is a place where no one wants to go."

"That's true."  
The old man kept quiet for a moment.  
"Nevertheless, he chose this way when he decided to save you. And I guess he knew that it would happen."

Casey's eyes widened, for a moment he refused to understand the meaning of these words.  
"Zeke is ... the dealer sent him into the arena instead of me?"

"No, not him. Zeke was actually living in a no-man's-land between the slaves and the privileged all life long. The slaves fear and hate him, the privileged use him but he actually never belonged to them completely. Zeke is the illegitimate son of Aaron Tyler, one of the most privileged people on earth. They have the power, they have the money, they make the rules. His father couldn't let him get away with his behavior; he decided to send Zeke into the arena, alone, with some of his best soldiers."

"Great God!"  
Casey needed to close his eyes, he forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out, to fight the dull feeling in his head. So, Zeke was dead, because his own father had sent him into the arena to fight and he, Casey, was still alive?

Suddenly he did remember the days and nights they had spent in their room of the prep-house. Zeke had never been very talkative, but his presence was somehow comforting. Secretly he had always taken care of him, now Casey realized that. The day Zeke had taken him to this secret place, when he had tried to convince him to betray others just to save himself. The look in his eyes, when Casey had told him that this was not an option; that he would never be able to move on after demolishing other people's life ... And now ... Zeke was dead because of him.

Desperately he forced his tears back, knowing that he would probably never be able to stop crying again as soon as it had started. Then he opened his eyes again. The old man was eyeing him apprehensively.  
"Why did you save me," Casey asked, his voice still shaky.  
"He died for me. Tell me, how can I live with that?"

A long pause followed before he got an answer.  
"He didn't die in the arena."

"What?"  
Casey stared at him in disbelief, not sure if he had gotten his words right.  
"But how can that be? Zeke told me ... he said, that it is almost impossible to survive."

"That's true," agreed the old man in a low voice.  
"When you end up there as a slave, it's very unlikely that you will get out there as a freeman. I know only one, a good guy before, but after the arena, he never was himself again. No one leaves the arena unharmed."

Casey blinked, not sure if he was ready to hear more. But the guy already continued.  
"For Zeke, though, it was different. It was not the first time that he was in the arena."

The lump in his throat seemed to swell up even more.  
"How do you mean that?"

"Like I said, he is the son of Aaron Tyler. Not only rich and powerful, he is the cruelest one when it comes to using his slaves. Their life means nothing to him. He humiliates them, he tortures them, he kills them ... all to his own pleasure.

Zeke is grown up in this world. His father did send him, like his others sons, in the arena before ... as a good trained hunter. Zeke was one of the best; a role model for a lot other young privileged." 

Memories crossed Casey's mind. _The things I've seen … what I've been part of … I could never tell you,_ Zeke had told him. _You would hate me even more than I already hate myself._ He just had refused to listen. Zeke was a slave with no future, just like he was. A friend, a confidant. Now he was forced to see the cruel truth: Zeke on the other side of the society, the privileged, the hunter who tortured and killed slaves. He could even picture him enjoying every moment of it. And he could see his triumphant smile when he came off as the winner. Casey slowly shook his head in the hopeless try to wipe out these thoughts again.

"He is not a monster," he whispered.

"No, he isn't," the man agreed.  
"He's just a victim of the circumstances. When he started to question the system it was much too late for him. All the things he has done, I'm afraid he will never be able to forgive himself. I don't know if we did him a favor with saving his life. He was ready to die."

"But he did fight!"

"Not for survival. Only against his father. He had had the control over his life, he didn't want him to control also his death. When we found him he was rather dead than alive. We took him here to ease at least his pain, but I was sure that he wouldn't make through the night."

It felt as if an electric shock was running through Casey's body, he could barely hide his trembling.  
"Wait. You did take him here? And he is ...?"

"Yes."  
The guy nodded.  
"For the moment he is stable. His body is strong, despite all his injuries, he is still fighting. Maybe he could recover. His soul, though ... well, we can't force him to live."

+++

Casey's heart was up to his mouth when the old man finally stopped in front of a steel door and pulled it open. He shifted uncomfortable in the old wheelchair. 'At the end of the 20th century all hospitals used these', the man had told him, when Casey had stared at the strange vehicle bewildered. 'To transport sick persons who weren't able to walk on their own.' Nowadays there were band-conveyer and transporting capsules in the hospitals ... not for Casey and the other unprivileged population, though. Like almost everything which could make life bearable.

First he had tried to protest, but the old man had insisted, to lift him into the wheelchair and roll him to Zeke's room.  
"It's either that, or you'll have to wait a few more days until you can see him. We are much too glad to have you back and I'm not willing to risk this."

So he had finally given in. To wait for some days was not an option, not when Zeke was ready to give himself up.

Casey gasped shocked when his eyes fall onto the single bed in the room. Despite the warning of the old man, he wasn't prepared for that. There were two IV's standing beside the bed, one to give Zeke, at least, some fluidity, because he refused to eat or even to drink; the other one with meds to ease his pain. A bucket on the floor, with a flexible tube in it. Drop ... drop ... drop again, every time when a blob of a bloody-looking liquid fall into the bucket. That was all they could still do for him with their scares medical resources.

One leg of Zeke was put into an extension bandage, one arm in a cast, his head was covered with a large bandage too, his nose swollen and black, the eyes ... Casey felt tears welling up and turned his head away. Thankful, that a light cover did hide the rest of Zeke's body. He wasn't sure if he would endure more.

The man wheeled him closer to the bed, then he put his hand onto his shoulder.  
"I'm there when you need me," he said, before leaving him alone with Zeke.  
"Just call."

For a long while, Casey was just sitting there, staring at Zeke, who didn't show any sign of life. Hesitating he put a finger onto his lips, wondrously almost unharmed, soft and warm, these lips which had kissed him ...

A light sigh tore him out of his thoughts and when he looked up he noticed that Zeke stared at him with cloudy eyes. Suddenly he started to tremble, not able to say a word, the mixture of shock, relief, pain and hope was almost too much.

"Shouldn't be here."  
Zeke lips barely moved when he talked.

"Hell ..."

Casey grabbed for his unbandaged hand.  
"I'm still alive," he whispered.  
"Like you are."

Zeke narrowed his eyes and turned the head aside.  
"Shit."

"No, it's not," Casey assured him.  
"I'm glad that I'm still here. That you did save me from ... the arena ... and all ... I can't say how much ..."

Zeke shook his head barely visible.  
"I failed," he whispered.  
"I wanted ... give you ... peace. No more ... hunger ... pain ... Never ..."  
His eyes met Casey's again, clearer now.  
"I didn't want you to sell yourself again ... that's not a good life."

"Not long ago I would have agreed with you," Casey said.  
"After my parents death, our farm burned down, I left behind alone. I couldn't see anything good in this world. And I didn't care much about it if I would live or die.

But it has changed now. You have changed it. Because of you, I'm still here. And I can see a spark of hope at the horizon."

To his surprise suddenly a faint smile sneaked onto Zeke's lips ... and he realized that he had never seen him smiling before.  
"Still the stupid, little boy," he murmured.  
"Still hoping to turn into a sparkling hero who can fight all evil with one hit of the sword."

"And what if? I'd given up all my dreams, but now ... The Resistance is real. Even my parents did believe in it, that there is still a chance for this world. Only a small one, I know, it will last a lifetime, or longer, to change something. But if we don't make the first step, the world will turn into one big arena one day."

Zeke pulled the face and groaned slightly.  
"Too late."  
Obviously, a painful effort to keep talking, but he was fighting for every word.  
"Already is ... controlled ... all of them ... monsters. I know ... one of them ... No chance to win, Casey, just pain, too much pain. Don't do it, please."

Finally exhausted he gasped for air, desperate, ragged breaths. Casey felt tears burning in his eyes again.  
"No, you are not a monster" he protested.  
"Your father tried to make you be one, but he failed. No matter what you have done before, finally, you realized that it is wrong. And you stood up against the system. No monster would do what you have done ... for me."

His fingers closed around Zeke's, he squeezed them slightly. No reaction, Zeke's eyes were still open but Casey wasn't sure if he was still listening.  
"You can't give up now. Do you hear me? If you just sneak away like a fucking coward, it will make them think that they defeated you. And I will not let this happen, because ... I care for you."

There was a dark glimpse in Zeke's eyes while he watched Casey in silence.  
"Better ... not," he murmured after a long while.  
"No one ... cares about me."

His eyes rolled back and fall shut when he finally drifted off into a fitful sleep. His fingers still entwined with Casey's as if they were his last lifeline.

**Author's Note:**

> also posted at my LJ in two chapters


End file.
